A database tells you what exists.
A workspace does the work.
Legal databases are excellent at what they were built for. They were not built to draft, to track, or to remember what you were doing.
A database is a lookup. You arrive with a question already formed, it returns documents, and everything after that — reading, extracting, drafting, checking — is still yours to do. That was the right design when the alternative was a library.
A workspace holds the matter, not just the search. The research and the draft are the same piece of work, so they live in the same place. The court date belongs to the matter, so it sits with it.
The difference is not how much either one knows. It is how much of the work you still have to carry between them.
Research
Keyword search, you filter the results
Ask in plain language, get the answer
Case law
You read the judgments to find the point
The point, with the case behind it
Drafting
A separate tool, or by hand
The same place as the research
Case status
A different portal, separate login
Beside the matter it belongs to
Contracts
Not covered
Repository, obligations and renewals
Context
Lost at every switch
One matter, throughout
Where a database is still better.
Depth of archive
Decades of editorial curation, including material that predates digitisation.
Editorial headnotes
Written by people who read the judgment, with the reasoning summarised by hand.
Established citators
A citation history built and maintained over years.
Most practices will use both. PleadSmart is built for the work that happens after you have found the case.